More about browsers

Having previously blogged on K9 browser I have to return with some disappointing news,we have had trouble copying and pasting pictures from it and so we went back to the drawing board. We are experimenting with Mobicip but are also considering returning to Safari.
We have a meeting with parents planned for the news year to talk some more with them about safe surfing. Increasingly I feel the answer is to teach the children about being repsonsible and to guide them through the challenges and issues. I'm still optimistic that they can rise to the challenge if we give them the trust and repsoncpsibility. I would also like to spend more time with parents considering the filtering that is being offered by the Internet providers they use at home. In the meantime in school there is not chance of anyone accessing anything inappropriate our local authority filtering is so severe I found this morning that most of the Bible was blocked!

Tuesday is Vocab day

Learning Pod is a big class, they are enthusiastic learners but all found school, everyone agrees they are very noisy. So I really appreciate our routines for learning which get us off to a good start everyday.
On Mondays and WednesdAys we read, on Thursday we have equipment check and on Fridays we write a learning log, but Tuesdays is vocab day.
We love the Chamabers Thesaurus and Dictionary on our iPods and have used them every week to improve our word level work in all kinds of writing and speaking and listening activities.
I've blogged before about our Vocab posters made on the iPods using Pages but we do other work too.
Last week we did poster work on words associated with the cold as part of our winter writing project and I have to confess it failed to yielded many interesting results. So tomorrow the stakes are raised and we are looking at this fabulous winter poem by Laurie Lee.

Christmas Landscape

Tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of glass
The jackdaw shivers in caged branches of iron
The stars have talons
There is hunger in the mouth of vole and badger
Silver agonies of breath in the nostril of the fox
Ice on the rabbit’s paw
Tonight has no moon, no food for the pilgrim
The fruit tree is bare, the rose bush a thorn
And the ground is bitter with stones
But the mole sleeps and the hedgehog lies curled in a womb of leaves
And the bean and the wheat seed hug their germs in the earth
And a stream moves under the ice
Tonight there is no moon
But a star opens like a trumpet over the dead
And tonight in a nest of ruins the blessed babe is laid
And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles
And the child lights his lantern and stares at his tinsel toy
And our hearts and hearths smoulder with live ashes
In the blood of our grief the cold earth is suckled
In our agony the womb convulses its seed
And in the last cry of anguish
The child’s first breath is born


We will begin by underlining all the best words(wow words) and then I will ask pupils to shade the words using warm or cool colours to show words in the poem that are cold and hostile and words in the poem that are soft and warm. This should show the transition in the poem from cold to warm and yield some more interesting and varied vocabulary for our posters.

See our blog for some of our winter Vocab work and I'm hoping that if you look tomorrow there will be some even better work.

wordenwriters.blogspot.com

Enjoyment and Engagement

Rolling out the iPod project beyond the walls of the Learning Pod and into the school at large.  Enjoying sharing the love with my colleagues.  Nothing quite like having a pupil rush up to you on the corridor to tell you they have been learning their French vocab on the app you downloaded in class or emailing you to say how much they have enjoyed a lesson.
One little device, putting the life back into learning!

Deeper not broader

I have been considering whether I give children enough time to complete their best work, or whether some of my methods of generating pace and covering the curriculum are actually robbing them of the chance to learn and express creativity.
We have nearly completed one term in Learning Pod. We have six curriculum areas to cover and in addition to that I have identified a need to focus on literacy, a need to develop awareness of proactive and positive digital citizenship and to develop thinking skills and social skills through explicit taught programmes of study. I also need to spend time experimenting with the iPods and learning how best to use them to promote quality learning.

How will we fit everything in to our 10 hour a week?

My current ideas for future planning are,

Concentrate on doing the right things well
Go deeper, not broader
Design curriculum based around the children's needs
Make space for questioning, thinking, discussing and being creative
Give pupils choices and ask them what they would like to learn
Focus on relationships not content
Have fun!

My writing family

My family, four children and a husband, are all writers. No one talks in an explicit or self conscious way about their writing, they just do it. Two of our children have had difficulties acquiring literacy, they are also writer. For us writing is an aspect of school, work and many of the other things we enjoy. For us, our computers and hand held devices are causing us to write more.

Peter is at university studying politic and communications. He went to university following a Btec course and is on a steep learning curve regarding study skills and academic writing but has admirably risen to the challenge. More importantly he is active on a team writing for his church website and it looks stunning.

http://www.riverchurchliverpool.com/

Edward has a blog where he creates fabulous illustrations of readings from the Bible. I'm also impressed with his stories presented in PowerPoint using animated gifs to illustrate, a technique he has devised himself.

http://jamesoneversetwo.blogspot.com

Jonathan is a prolific writer and keeps notebooks. He throws himself into writing school assignments but also pursues personal writing projects with enthusiasm. He has an amazing Prezi where he catalogues folk music recordings and a blog on food. He has experimented in writing in the style of his favourite authors and write his own stories inspired by folktale, myths, legends and history.

jam-jartrifle.blogspot.com

Lucy is 9 and following her brother's footsteps! also enjoys writing in PowerPoint, where she has recently created a detailed and fully illustrated Christmas list. She is also a master of Prezi.

I'm proud of my writing family and am inspired to make writers out of many more children and young people.

http://classroomtalk.com/?p=729

Tom learns French

Great buzz in the library yesterday after school. Staff were given their iPod Touch 2, ready for next weeks inset where we will be looking at how the device can be used in class to promote greater enjoyment and engagement and better learning.

Even better news was that this evening I spent some time with our MFL specialist talking about using the iPods in French. She is keen to get started and had cited improved use of digital technology as one her targets for the year. She does not currently use an IOS device and I applaud her willingness to experiment.

So, our plan isn't anything super technical and it maybe sounds a little tame to those of you doing the cutting edge stuff in the classroom. It does however, focus on the learning and gives pupil's that vital opportunity to listen to themselves and make some decisions about how they are progressing. I have often felt that in speaking exams our pupils lack the confidence they need to be really successful. I hope this will strengthen their ability to speak out in a foreign language and make the necessary practice much more fun.

She is going to teach them some simple questions and resposnes in French so they can make a short video. I took her through how to use the camera to video and how to share a video using email. I shared my experience of working with the class helping them produce meaningful paired discussions for recording.

For example, I find they need well structured questions and they need their time divided into suitable chunks for each stage of the process. I usually model the expected outcome from the front of the class so they can see what a good interview looks like before we begin. I look forwards to seeing how the learning turns out.

And if that sounds a bit boring we then moved onto the possibility of using Talking Tom Cat for more speaking practice. If you don't already know Talking Tom Cat, it is a great free App with a fun cartoon cat who copies everything you say in a comedy voice. My colleague and I are especially excited that you can record what Tom says and share it using email. I know the kids will love hearing Tom's amazing French.

It's Blocked

The biggest frustration we've had so far on the iPod project is the local authority connection blocking so many of the things we would like to access. But a solutions is in sight and I realised quite early on that it was better to adopt a problem solving attitude and try and find a way round the obstacles in our path, than to stress about it.
Despite this I have been frustrated today, no Flikr in school and no obvious solution of how to curate the pupil's pictures for their art project on pattern.
That's not to say I'm not in favour of blocking things. The iPods went home today and not before I had personally been through each and every one of them to alter the restrictions and make them as 'safe' as possible. This is what parents have asked for and we value our partnership with them. In addition to this we have disabled Safari and have loaded an App, K9 that acts as a browser with filters. Strange icon, but seems good. I am working towards developing these young people as responsible and proactive digital citizens, but for now they need some help in staying safe.
I started this project enthused by the idea that pupils would have access to ICT twenty four seven. Following that I was wow-ed by the Apps, mainly content based Apps. I soon realised that Apps that allowed pupls to present their knowledge and understanding in new and creative ways were much more exciting than content based Apps and now I am at the stage of feeling enormously excited by the possibilities of social networking and seeing the pupils become creators in their own right. In fact I'm more and more convinced that the future is connectivity and collaboration through social media.
Unfortunately, it's blocked!

Tweet

Learning Pod pupils can't access social networking sites but they can use Edmodo to connect with one another and they can use the 140 character format to increase their writing skills.

We have set up a tweet group on Edmodo and it makes a great starter or plenary. Writing in 140 characters is developing their editng skils, forcing pupils to make choices about what they will include and what they will leave out. It has the potential to support more careful choices of vocabulary as pupils seek a single word that will communicate exactly what they want to say. It makes them very conscious of the structure of their writing.

So far they have tweeted about their reading and beliefs about God. Watch this space to see how the skill develops as the pupils grapple with the new 140 character format for direct and succinct communications.

Word level work

The fantastic Learning Pod pupils have a great routine for word level work, which we like to do before before we embark any any major piece of writing. We look an examples of writing together and talk about the vocabulary being used and how the writer is using it to create different effects. We then think about the effects we wish to create in our writing and the vocab areas that need enriching.
The iPods are great from this point forwards because they allow every pupil to move easily between the dictionary and the thesaurus in search of words that will make their writing special. We have used free dictionaries but have finally settled for Chambers dictionary and thesaurus Apps which cost, but are well worth it. Pupils have learnt how to copy and paste from the Apps straight into pages to make a vocabulary poster. They are now familiar with the difference between a definition and synonym and they are slowly developing more refined skills in selecting the most appropriate words.
We are currently compiling an anthology of our best spooky writing from our Halloween project. This includes, non-fiction reports, RE work on the Mexican Day of the Dead, descriptive writing, narrative writing and list poems. Alongside these different texts pupils are presenting their vocabulary posters, which they have carefully constructed to be visually stunning and rich in WOW words.

Thinking Skills

My favourite thinking skills activity is called 'Look, Look and Look Again'. I love this activity because of the intense sense of concentration that it creates in the room and because it is completely inclusive. Every child can participate and every child's contribution counts. In is a versatile learning activity and once the pupil's have learnt the method it brings out thoughtful and reflective responses.

Today I used key note and mirrored the iPad screen to my projector. Pupils tweeted their repsponses.

Method
Choose a picture. It should be high quality, have enough detail to generate a variety of comments and be engaging enough to force pupil's to concentrate and observe in more detail than they would normally. It should be related to the current class learning.
Explain to pupils that they are about to see a picture on the screen. They will see it for 2 minutes, 1 minute and then for 30 seconds. After each viewing they should write down what they see. I use a writing frame to record the three observations under the headings, Look, Look and Look again. Following this pupils can pair share, share observations in small groups or participate in a larger teacher led session.

Aims
To concentrate and observe detail. To think. To see beyond the surface. To introduce a new learning topic. To add an extra dimension or extend learning topic. To stimulate discussion. To listen to and appreciate different and opposing views. To make inferences, predictions, to ask questions and exercise imagination.

Follow up
I often follow this up with a second thinking skills activity, Before, Now and Next. In this activity pupils use a simple writing frame in three parts to plan a story based on the picture. They start by completing 'now' and write about what's happening in the picture. They must then imagine what happened just before the picture was made / taken and what will happen next. This is a great way to plan a story. More advanced writer could easily progress to telling their story in a non-sequential way.

Today's picture

Today 's picture was part of our work on ultimate questions and letters to God. Some pupils were alarmed at the thought of writing to God, especially those who don't believe in him. But they were more comfortable when I told them they could write to him and explain why they did not believe in him, and ask him all the questions they wanted to ask, as if he did exist. I explained that ultimate questions are big questions in life, they have no single correct answer and people often disagree about the answers.

A thoughtful lesson with a twitter plenary, 'tell me your most interesting thoughts about God, in 140 characters'.

Edmodo

Everyone in Learning Pod is now using Edmodo. There was a cheer of delight as the first couple of children had success in setting up their accounts and a few exclamations about how much it looks like Facebook.

Edmodo is a great tool for the classroom and we are using the Edmodo App for iPod Touch as well as the website. Edmodo describes itself as a secure social networking site for teachers and students. In many ways it is like a VLE, but it's main advantages are that it can be used to connect students to their learning in the same way that a social networking site connects them with their friends.

Everyone sent me a message on the Spooky Writing Targets group, to let me know what work they would be completing in class and how they planned to improve their writing further.

A couple of pupils joined the 'Write Now!' group and one pupil wrote a short post about not enjoying writing because she is a poor speller. She is quite a good writer and I didn't know how discouraged she had been feeling about her spelling. So it was a great chance for me to encourage her to keep writing and not to let the spelling problems stand it the way.

Looking forwards to following Polar Bears International on Edmodo from November 14th.

Penultimate for iPad

A friend and colleague introduced me to this stunning App today. She teaches in science and can imagine all kinds of creative uses for it in her subject area. The calligraphy pen is easy to use and replicates handwriting in a smooth, un-cluncky way that makes the App especially easy to use. All the curves of your letters are beautifully formed and everything is completed with your finger-no need for a keyboard!



On Penultimate you can write or draw in a variety of colours on plain, lined or graph paper. Additional paper styles can be purchased from the App store. Pictures can be imported or you can draw your own illustrations. You can share your note books as PDF files or export your notebooks to iTunes. Each notebook is bound in a simple moleskin style leather binding and has a title, the date the notebook was made and the date of the last update.



Also checkout Handwriting for iPod and iPhone another App by Cocoabox that does exactly what you would expect - takes beautiful handwritten notes. I will be adding it to the collection on the Learning Pod devices.

http://www.cocoabox.com/penultimate
http://www.cocoabox.com/
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad engagement

I'm at the National Media Museum in Bradford, making some notes on a photographic exhibition, harsh documentary landscape with military subjects. A small crowd of children gather round to see the iPad.

One little boy asks to try it out and I let him write his name. 'Abdil', he types it out carefully, one letter at a time. Other children write their names. I'm like the Pied Piper, I have to stop again and more children do the same, 'Esa, Salina, John, Musa, Laiba, Vaneesa, Leah', they type out their names in the middle of the notes I'm making on the photographs of Donovan Wylie.

The power of the iPad to engage and inspire, the potential to turn children into writers.

I was at the Media Museum Bradford, where a new exhibition entitled, Life on Line, opens March 2012. This exhibition explores the way the Internet has changed our lives as individuals and as a society.

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/

Social Networking and Learning

Ongoing research into how social networking influences young people is raising some interesting questions. The ostrich approach to social networking and how it influences our learners is quick to condemn. But the research referred to in this article raises a series of more discerning questions about social networking and participation in learning. It help us as educators make some important distinction between how young people use social networking sites like Facebook and how this might link to their learning.

What insights do you have into why some activities like commenting and viewing photos seem to encourage participation in school life?
What insights do you have as to why other activities such as posting photos and playing games are negatively predictive of such engagement?

Unfortunately, governments and then by extension high school teachers having knee-jerk negative evaluations of social media negates any possibility of examining the academic benefits of such sites. It also shows a great misunderstanding of how social media can be used for both social and educational good.

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/q-and-a-how-facebook-usecorrelates-with-student-outcomes/?partner=rss&emc=rss

When the learners lead

When the leaders learn, the teacher stands back and watches in amazement and with great respect!

Very early on when the children had only had the iPods for a few days, we were working at our humanities project on China. I had made a folder of Apps about China and the pupils were using them to make a mind map using SimpleMind. The China Apps were a strange assortment and I wasn't especially proud of the quality of the material. The App on the Teracotta Army (Art Gallery of NSW) was of especially high quality but other Apps, mainly those designed for tourists were mixed.

I think what happened represented the kind of shift in learning that I had hoped for. I noticed all across the classroom pupils were plugging into their head sets and murmmerings in a new language were filling the room. The pupils had stumbled across Chinese language teaching Apps and they were teaching themselves to say 'hello' and count to ten in Chinese. It represented a small step in learning with huge potential for how we can use the iPods to transform learning from passive to active, for how the teacher can become less and the pupils can become more. I had become the facilitator and they became lead learners and I hadn't had to try that hard.

Towards the end of the lesson, one pupil brought her mind map to show me. It looked really good and represented a lot of hard work on her part. She had also saved several pictures to her camera roll and she wanted to know how she could add them to the mind map. This pupil wanted to develop her learning, she had her own ideas about how she wanted to represent her research. Her enquiry makes me even more convinced of the potential available to us using iPods to transform learning.

Sadly Simplemind does not let you add pictures. Anyone out there know of a mind mapping App that will let you add pictures? Let me know !

Reading a Booker shortlisted novel on my iPad

I always follow the Booker Prize, from the longlist and shortlist announcements through to the big night, which in recent years I've followed on twitter. I love to read and have a mostly old-fashioned relationship with my favourite pastime. I still prefer independent booksellers and I have been known to select a volume purely on the quality of the binding. So I am a little surprised to be promoting iBooks so enthusiastically. I've just purchased Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, a great writer who I am lucky enough to count as a friend. I found it easily enough in the iBook store and purchasing it was as simple as entering my Apple PIN. (Incidentally, it's a great read!)

Turning the page of your newly purchased ibook, using the little red book mark, looking up a word in the dictionary or annotating the text, the functions of iBooks are a show case for everything that is beautiful about Apple products. As a book lover I feel that the maker of this product has truly understood what it is I love about a book and has captured that in pure digital mastery.

Many parents have asked me if I will stil be using hard copy for reading in class and the answer is a resounding, YES. In class we will use electronic and hard books, just as we will use Pages and write with a pencil. Research suggests that once digital learners become engaged in their learning they are more likely to start accessing a greater variety of learning resources and this usually includes borrowing more books from the library.

iBooks is a straightwards way of accessing reading material that I'm recommending to all the young readers in my class. I have purchased for them twenty sample chapters of books and after the hioliday we will have a class vote to decide which books we shall buy in full. They get to choose from some great children's writers including Antony Horowitz, Louise Rennison, Lemony Snicket, Malorie Blackman, Terry Pratchett, Jacqueline Wilson and Eoin Colfer.

However, a word of warning if you are considering a similar reading project in school. The iBook free samples are great but you need to check them because whereas some publishers give readers a whole chapter for free other publishers give little more than a front cover and a bibliography of the author's other published works.

Partnering with Parents

The parents blame it on the teachers and the teachers blame it on the parents but it is obvious that successful learning can only happen when there is a strong home school relationship.
Last night I met the Learning Pod parents and the Learning Pod pupils had a chance to show off their devices.

It was a great opportunity to surprise, shock and inspire the parents with the iPod learning potential. Many parents, especially those who are not iPod/iPhone users find it hard to imagine how the devices can be used to support meaningful learning. Seeing the children at work really helped the penny to drop and I'm delighted that so many are choosing to partner with us through a voluntary donation scheme run by the E-Learning Foundation.

http://www.e-learningfoundation.com/

Many parents have asked to come into school next term for some hands on sessions, using the iPods and equipping themselves to support their own child 's learning when the devices go home at the end of the month. We had some great conversations and I look forwards to building on this very productive home school relationship.

Using blogs

I have been getting ready for using blogs in the Learning Pod and have found this research article by Russell Beale, University of Birmingham exactly what I needed to focus my thinking.

http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_hc07_sppaper1.pdf

Russell Beale writes from a higher education setting, but I share his view that blogging should encourage pupils to develop more of a sense of community in their group and that secondly learners will benefit from see the reflections and comments of their peers on learning.

However, whilst I have found the article very useful I also had some reservations about another idea present in the pedagogy. Russell Beale writes,

From a social and pedagogical perspective, blogging provides two advantages. The first is that it can support a sense of community amongst the students. They can read and comment on other students postings, and can learn from both experiences that others have discovered, and from the insights of their peers regarding those experiences. In this way, exceptional students can forge into the unknown, being opinionated, making deep insightful comments on the state of the world, the role of HCI, or anything else, whilst the weaker students are pulled along in their wake, reading and learning, able to make their own sense of things in their own time.

I was immediately uncomfortable with the idea of 'exceptional students' and the way that this classification had implications from the community building objectives of the blogging exercise.

Is it not the case that all my pupils are exceptional?
Shouldn't all of my learners have the opportunity to be opinionated?
Wouldn't it be good if some of the 'exceptional' pupils were 'pulled along in the wake ' of the 'less exceptional'? Wouldn't that be good for their learning experience?
How will the group dynamics be affected if there is an assumption amongst teachers and learners that some learners are exceptional?

On the other hand I can see that within a community of learners , where interaction is being encouraged as a tool for learning, pupils are in the process of learning from one another. Certainly there will be occasions when one pupil or a small group of pupils are lead learners.

It has led me to thinking about how to give every pupil the opportunity to be a lead leader and it has caused me to reflect on the ways in which relationships in a class impact on learning and progress.

Transforming learning from passive to active.

I'm really excited about the potential we have to connect with one another in class using our iPods and I'm currently exploring the different possibilities. I'm working with other staff to ensure the children stay safe and we still have problems to overcome getting connected in school.

So, today because I couldn't wait, we tried using email to connect and engage with our text in literacy. We were looking at plot device and I wrote a number of questions on the board about cliff hangers, dilemmas and resolutions. Whilst I read the text to the pupils they emailed their responses and I used my iPad to mirror the emails onto my white board.

I loved this lesson because very pupil was involved. I had a least one message from each pupil. I loved it because when I read to the class it is usually a problem because it is passive but the email meant that everyone was active. I was able to respond to some of the comments in class and I have since sent an email to every pupil thanking them for their participation and suggesting how they could further develop their contributions in the future.

I'm now researching more effective ways of doing this. I want a live feed where pupils can interact with each other and me as I teach.

http://www.ncs-tech.org/?p=2886

Digital literacy

ICT literacy is the interest, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital technology and communication tools to access, manage, integrate and evaluate information, construct new knowledge and communicate with others in order to participate effectively in society.

From, PISA Framework for the Assessment of ICT Literacy

The right to an education or the right to learn?

Will Richardson writes in the Huffington Post,

Have we reached the limits of our traditional school system's capacity to deal with the diversity of learners that come into our schools today?

We need to shift our thinking from a goal that focuses on the delivery of something -- a primary education -- to a goal that is about empowering our young people to leverage their innate and natural curiosity to learn whatever and whenever they need to. The goal is about eliminating obstacles to the exercise of this right -- whether the obstacle is the structure and scheduling of the school day, the narrow divisions of subject, the arbitrary separation of learners by age, or others -- rather than supplying or rearranging resources. The shift is extremely powerful...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-richardson/have-schools-reached-limits_b_853848.html

Social Media - our enemy?

I've been a head of year and I know how many problems are caused by malicious use of social media.  But social media is in itself neither good nor bad.

Can social media be used to promote learning and if so how?
How can we use social media and ensure pupils and staff stay safe?
What guidelines can we give to pupils about using social media safely?
Is it possible for us to teach pupils how to use social media well if we can't access social media in school?

http://critical-thinkers.com/2011/10/can-social-media-in-the-classroom-encourage-critical-thinking/

Postscript

Thank you for reading my Blog.
Please leave a comment and let me know about your interests, especially if you use iPods to teach.

All the posts on this Blog have been copied from a previous Blog (hence they all have the same post date)

Able and Gifted

All my pupils are able and gifted and I strive to design learning that meets their individual needs. The iPods help with this because when I'm thinking on the hoof and responding to the needs of pupils as they arising in class I have resources available at the tap of the screen.

This was true yesterday when an academically able pupil was about to start her writing assignment, a non- chronological report, a task that I had planned with the whole class in mind. As soon as I started to explain the task to her I realised how ridiculously easy it was and how many times she would have completed such tasks in previous year group lessons.

We talked together and decided that to support this pupil's interest in fiction with a scary theme she would write a non-fiction report on English folklore. I like the way this work is challenging her to distinguish, in a more subtle way, between fiction writing tasks and non-fiction writing. I also think it will develop further her understanding of the fiction she loves to read now. Ultimately in would be good to see her becoming more open to an increasing number of fiction genres and to start making more mature reading choices.

She is starting with boggarts and a has mission to discover the origin of the boggart and the classic English folk tales about them. She has her Safari web browser to help and I can email her some links to websites that will help her - all made possible with iPod Touch.

What Apple TV did for me!

I hadn't really believed it would work, but yesterday our technician and a fantastically techie colleague set up the new Apple TV to mirror the screen of my iPad to my whiteboard.

I had been using a document camera to show the screen to the class when I was teaching but this is so much better!

It looks better and I can be mobile. I can point the iPad camera at a pupil's work and show it to the rest of the class. I can model the use of different Apps and of course I can easily deliver Keynote and show Pages documents.

Now to discover whether the same thing is possible with the screen of an iPod?

Is an iPod too small for Pages?

The data is purely anecdotal, but 34/34 pupils report that the iPod is not too small for Pages!

I tend to use the iPad in class to model and teach Pages but the pupils are producing some fabulous work and don't seem to be hampered by the size of the device. They are quickly learning how to use the different functions in Pages and are developing new skills fast. The results are slick and professional in appearance and far superior to similar work produced in Word or Publisher.

We all love the templates on offer and I find it useful to match specific success criteria in my lesson to a template. For example I can stipulate that a report must be illustrated with three pictures and direct the pupils to use Visual Report, a template with spaces for three pictures.

Pupils tell me that they love using Pages on the iPod. They don't think the screen is too small and they don't think the key board is too small. Their work completely supports this.

More writing - not less writing

Our iPods are helping us engage more with literacy objectives.

Over the next fortnight all the pupils will be producing two pieces of writing on a Spooky theme. One will be a non-chronological report and the other a piece of descriptive/narrative writing. These will be assessed pieces and pupils will be assessing each other's work using the APP criteria.
So how have we used the iPods to help us achieve our literacy objectives?

Word level learning. We have used the thesaurus (Chambers) on the iPod to improve vocabulary and discuss word choices that create mood and atmosphere. Pupils have used an App called SimpleMinds plus to make mind maps to organise new vocabulary and the Poster template in Pages to select pictures and words to illustrate ideas.

Non-chronological report. We have researched and prepared reports on bats and spiders. We have used Safari to research the topics and selected pictures for the report. Pupils have a choice of word processing or writing the reort by hand. Many have chosen to use Pages to present a report consisting of words and pictures using the Visual Report or Flyer template.

Narrative/descriptive writing. To guide pupils through the process of writing their own chilling tale I have used Book Creator to make an epub document that I have published in iBooks. Pupils can use this to guide them through the writing process.

Poetic devices. Shakespeare, J K Rowling, and other poets have provided our examples and given us inspiration, but the spookiness is all in the way you read the text. The voice recording facility on the iPod gives children a chance to record their own reading and listen to themselves (often for the very first time). Pupils listen to their first recording and decide what they need to do to improve. They then make a second recording after they have adjusted and practised their reading.

The iCloud

I've generate a great deal of excitement in the Learning Pod this week with a celebration of iOS5 Wednesday and an impressive soliloquy about the iCloud. "Where's the iCloud?", asked one little boy as he walked in to the classroom this morning. "Why? It's up there", I replied pointing to a space somewhere in the centre of the room. He seemed satisfied.

I'm hugely excited about the potential we have to connect with one another and extend our learning beyond the four walls of our classroom. We're starting with email but beyond that I have plans for wikis, blogs and Edmodo. I can hardly wait, But we have had some problems to overcome using the iPods on the school network. We are getting closer to a solution and in the mean time I aspire to fluid file sharing and communications and inspire pupils with high expectations of what we will achieve.

30 reasons to use iPods in the classroom

I have been using iPod Touch with 34 year 7 pupils for 30 days and have 30 great things to say about our learning.

Pupils deserve the best technology
Pupils need access to their technology 24/7
Pupils are good at using this technology
iPods work
iPods are durable
iPods are beautiful
The work pupils produce on iPods is beautiful
Pupils know they have a top quality device and they treat it with respect
Pupils can record their own voice
Pupils can take photos
Pupils can take video
Pupils can access the Internet
Pupils can send and receive email
Pupils can write text
Pupils can use pictures
Pupils can make presentations
Pupils can organise themselves with calendars
Pupils can read books
Pupils can record themselves reading books
Pupils can make blogs
Pupils can join forums
Pupils can participate in wikis
Teachers can provide pupils with resources in many different file types
Pupils can message pupils
Pupils can play games to learn
Pupils can play games for fun
Pupils can access content
It's cheaper than text books
It's cheaper than a PC
It's engaging, enjoyable and challenging for pupils and teacher